Most people in Israel
when asked to identify the country which hosted the most recent reunion
of Waffen-SS veterans would probably guess either Germany or Austria,
which is a logical but incorrect response.
The answer in this case is Estonia, the smallest of the Baltic republics
and generally not known for particular Nazi sympathies. But the problem
is that in the Baltics, which suffered German and Soviet occupations,
the historical concepts generally accepted throughout Europe and
the rest of the world are turned topsy turvy, with the Nazis being
regarded as the by-far lesser of the two evils and the Soviets considered
the arch-villains.
Thus late last month, a day before I arrived in Tallinn to launch
the Russian-language edition of an anthology on contemporary anti-Semitism
dedicated to the memory of Simon Wiesenthal, Estonia hosted its annual
reunion of Waffen-SS veterans at Sinimäe, the site of one of
the fiercest battles fought by the 20th Waffen-SS Grenadier Division
(also known as the First Estonian Division) against the Soviets in
the latter stages of World War II.
SS veterans from other European countries, in which such gatherings
are illegal, were only too happy to join in the festivities in a
country where their service on behalf of the Third Reich is considered
by many to be worthy, rather than denigrated.
THE EXISTENCE of such a reunion, however, is only part of the story.
The attitude of the local authorities to the SS veterans and their
supporters on the one hand and to those opposed to such gatherings
on the others, is indicative of the distorted view on history currently
prevalent in Tallinn. Thus, for example, foreign SS veterans who
came to the reunion, as well as younger persons sympathetic to them,
were welcome guests in Estonia.
Foreign and even local anti-fascists who sought to demonstrate against
the reunion, on the other hand, were treated very harshly in a manner
totally unbecoming a country which is a member of NATO and the European
Union. Thus protesters from Finland and Latvia were declared persona
non grata and expelled from Estonia, whereas local anti-fascists
were arrested when they sought to protest in concentration camp garb,
while others were detained for no reason to make sure that they would
not be able to register their legitimate protest.
The annual SS veterans reunion is only the tip of the iceberg of
sympathy for these men who are considered fighters for Estonian independence
even though the victory they sought to achieve was for Nazi Germany,
which had no intention of granting them sovereignty. Thus all sorts
of souvenirs of the unit are widely available for purchase, its outstanding
soldiers are lauded as local heroes and their exploits are memorialized
in an impressive album readily available which emphasizes "their
selfless courage against communism and for the restoration of Estonian
independence," but which begrudgingly admits only in passing
that they "had to wear a German uniform to do so" (The
Estonian Legion in Words and Pictures, Tallinn, 2008, coedited by
none other than former [twice] Estonian prime minister Mart Laar).
DURING MY visit, I encountered several additional examples of the
Estonians' reversal of conventional historical wisdom about World
War II. The most famous, and the incident which sparked violent riots
in Tallinn in the spring of 2007, was the removal of a monument honoring
the Soviet soldiers who liberated the country from the yoke of the
Nazi occupation, from its central location in the capital to a military
cemetery on the outskirts of the city.
Besides grievously insulting the large Russian minority which views
the Soviet troops as heroes who achieved a vital victory in the fight
against Nazism, the removal of the statue was also a painful blow
to the Estonian Jewish community, whose annihilation in 1941 was
orchestrated by the Nazis and their Estonian collaborators. Having
visited both the monument's original location opposite the national
library and its new site, it is clear that Estonians prefer not be
reminded that their current narrative is a distortion of the historical
events of World War II.
I encountered another blatant example of the rewriting of Estonian
history at the Maarjamae memorial ground, dedicated to "the
units participating in the 1944 defensive battles in Estonia." It
was bad enough to see large plaques commemorating the infamous SS
Viking Division and other European Waffen-SS units, but the most
shocking and infuriating sight was a marker in honor of the Omakaitse,
a paramilitary self-defense organization which played a very active
role in the arrest and murder of numerous Jews and communists in
1941. Among its more notorious commanders was the mass murderer and
rapist Evald Mikson, who commanded the unit in Vonnu and whom the
Wiesenthal Center exposed living in Iceland in 1991.
TODAY WILL be marked in Estonia as a day of remembrance for the
victims of totalitarian regimes. This ostensibly innocuous initiative
to commemorate Nazi and communist victims together is actually just
a first step towards obtaining official recognition that communism
and Nazism were equally evil, a major step toward undermining the
current status of the Shoah as a unique tragedy and one which will
help deflect attention and criticism from the Estonians' distortion
of history and failure to face their Holocaust past. (They have since
independence, failed to prosecute a single Estonian Holocaust perpetrator,
while bringing to trial numerous communist criminals.)
On the surface, it would be poor manners for our ambassador to be
absent from the ceremonies, as if we are oblivious to Estonian suffering
under the communists, but as long as Estonia and the other Baltic
countries insist on rewriting history and relativizing Nazi crimes,
Israel must make it unequivocally clear that we will not support
such initiatives.
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